Monday's Poetry: "Street Musicians"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

American poet John Ashbery passed away yesterday at the age of ninety in his home state of New York.  Ashbery, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1976 - as well as nearly every American award for poetry, was widely recognized as one of this nation's preeminent word stylists.  Many regarded Ashbery as one of the most distinctive poets of the last fifty years.

To honor this great man of letters, I have chosen "Street Musicians" which was written in 1977, the year after he won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award, a period of time when he was certainly at the height of his poetic prowess.  This poem is from Ashbery's collection entitled Houseboat Days.  To me this piece is a cold look at growing old - but make of it what you will.


Street Musicians
by John Ashbery

One died, and the soul was wrenched out
Of the other in life, who, walking the streets
Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on
The same corners, volumetrics, shadows
Under trees. Farther than anyone was ever
Called, through increasingly suburban airs
And ways, with autumn falling over everything:
The plush leaves the chattels in barrels
Of an obscure family being evicted
Into the way it was, and is. The other beached
Glimpses of what the other was up to:
Revelations at last. So they grew to hate and forget each other.

So I cradle this average violin that knows
Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
The possibility of free declamation anchored
To a dull refrain, the year turning over on itself
In November, with the spaces among the days
More literal, the meat more visible on the bone.
Our question of a place of origin hangs
Like smoke: how we picnicked in pine forests,
In coves with the water always seeping up, and left
Our trash, sperm and excrement everywhere, smeared
On the landscape, to make of us what we could.